Posted on 9/15/2007, 10:12:14 PM by Grzegorz 246
In five weeks time, two years earlier than scheduled, the Polish people elect a new Parliament. Opinion polls show it's going to be a close-run event between the two main parties. So is Poland in for a repeat of the scenario of two years ago when no party gained enough votes to form a majority government?
The announcement by the Speaker of the House that the Parliament had dissolved itself was followed by long cheers from almost all sides. Only 54 deputies from the smaller parties voted against the dissolution, a move which the opposition described as the capitulation of the conservative government of Jaroslaw Kaczynski. Surprisingly to many people, opinion polls show his Law and Justice party running neck-and-neck with the liberal Civic Platform. Political analysts here agree that prime minister Kaczynski came out of the blocks faster than his opponents, managing to present the dissolution of the Parliament as an act of his courage rather than the failure of his cabinet. Comparisons with the 2005 elections are inevitable. At that time, the conservatives portrayed themselves as the advocates of a Poland of solidarity who will weed out corrupt networks, and the rival Civic Platform - as the liberals whose policies were to benefit the rich. This year Poles choose from the same two major parties by label but they know what the Law and Justice government looked like. And so they know instance, as Marcin Sobczyk of Interfax Central Europe in Warsaw stresses, that the anti-corruption drive is among Law and Justice's central themes.
"They know that the fight against corruption will continue. They don't have to guess that it will start. We also see certain developments on the foreign policy front that we weren't made aware of two years ago. Now we've had examples that the strong rhetoric towards Russia and Germany is also likely to continue. This will appeal more to the rightist voter than two years ago because two years ago the voter who supported such concepts would probably choose the far right League of Polish Families." How can one describe supporters of the liberal Civic Platform, which two years ago was narrowly defeated by Law and Justice? Jacek Kucharczyk of the Institute of Public Affairs.
"The person who is religious, a practicing Catholic but a bit skeptical about mixing religion with public affairs, rather conservative in general but at the same time rather happy about Polish transition and membership in the E.U. I don't think that economic liberalism plays a major role in the mindset of a Civic Platform voter." It may indeed appear as a paradox of the political scene in Poland that in spite of the instability and scandals of the past two years, as well as allegations that prime minister Kaczynski used the secret services and the justice ministry to eliminate his former coalition partners from politics, Law and Justice is doing very well in the polls. Marcin Sobczyk explains.
"I think the country likes the fact that the leadership of that party very intelligently addresses the concerns of a large group of citizens who were abandoned by the previous governments and political parties in the 1990s. Their concerns were not addressed because they were not seen as valuable in terms of political support. Now the ruling party is addressing the concerns of the people who live in provincial regions and who believe that they have been hit by the post-1989 transition."
There is much to indicate that early parliamentary election will not bring lasting political stability. A left-wing alliance which includes ex-communists and former anti-communist Solidarity activists is almost sure to come third in the election. The trouble is that - at this stage at least - it is an unlikely coalition partner for either of the two main players.
The Polls of Poles ...
Most of the polls I’ve seen put Civic Platform ahead of Law and Justice, but not all. Plus, there’s no telling how the small non-socialist parties will do.
Because it is improbable that any one party will gain an outright majority in the parliament, people are speculating about which parties might join into a coalition. The coalition possibilities are almost endless, because the parties don’t neatly line up in one dimension from “left” to “right.”
What are the parties, and how do they fit from “left-to-right”?
Civic Platform is a market-oriented liberal party and Law and Justice is a (traditional) conservative party. It’s kind of like our (U.S.) economic conservatives and our social conservatives.
Going into the last election, they were in an alliance with each other, in order to defeat the socialists. Initially, they were in agreement on matters such as reforming the economy.
They wiped the socialists so badly, that their alliance broke down. At this point, their differences became more important than their agreements.
Law and Justice, which won the most votes, took in two small populist-conservative parties to form a government, and froze out Civic Platform. They kept all three power ministries for itself and as well as President and Prime Minister. Them’s the breaks in politics.
BUT ... Law and Justice turned on one of the smaller parties whose leader, apparently, was curropt, and the smaller parties withdraw from the government. Themn, the parliament called a new election (which is where we now stand).
Well it would almost be a fairy tale here to not have a socialist party (as one of the major choices): Well actually both the Republicans and Democrats are sliding into socialism as of late..
wolf78; well you have to realize our Democrats are both socialist and SOCIAL radicals-they AREN’t conservative at all in any sense; not socially, and not economically-in this sense I doubt that the PiS is farther to the right than our Democrats..!
Trust me they ARE on the verge of supporting GAY Marriage here in the USA!- I hate their platform..and stances/beliefs!
I mean I doubt the PiS is further to the LEFT than AMerican Democratic party!..
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